Zimbabwe

Refugees dancing in Zimbabwe to celebrate World Refugee Day.

Copyright: United Nations in Zimbabwe

Zimbabwe Refugee Food Assistance Programme in 2015

Tongogara Refugee Camp– Some 550 km southeast of Zimbabwe’s capital, Tongogara Refugee Camp has swollen to 7,000 inhabitants in the past year. UNHCR currently provides assistance to cover refugees’ basic needs, including food and shelter. However, the camp is captive to its surrounding’s dry and dusty climate, and few are able to work outside its boundaries. Starting in January 2015, WFP will work with UNHCR to address the food needs of Tongogara’s refugees with a view to provide more sustainable solutions. This will enable UNHCR to re-direct its support towards other programmes that focus on income generation and education. The new WFP-UNHCR partnership in Tongogara Camp will help bridge refugees’ tumultuous past to a more promising future.

Overview

In recent years, food production in Zimbabwe has been devastated by a number of factors including natural disasters and economic and political instability. Recurrent drought, a series of poor harvests, high unemployment (estimated at more than 60%), restructuring of the agriculture sector and a high HIV/AIDS prevalence rate – at 14.7 per cent, the fifth highest in the world - have all contributed to increasing levels of vulnerability and acute food insecurity since 2001. This situation has necessitated large-scale humanitarian food relief operations in the country.

After drought and other shocks, it is vital that vulnerable households bounce back quickly. WFP helps communities build assets such as irrigation systems and earth dams to bolster resilience. Here, Topora villagers, once dependant on food assistance, harvest fish for the first time in a pond WFP helped create through a Cash/Food for Assets programme.